Introduction

Diplomatic discourse is commonly perceived as the most regulated and cautious variety of political language. It is produced within institutions, constrained by protocols, and addressed to audiences whose interests often diverge sharply. This apparent moderation, however, should not conceal its performative force. In crisis situations, diplomatic speech does not simply accompany political action; it helps define what counts as an event, who may be held responsible, which response becomes legitimate, and which delay may be reclassified as complicity.

The Gaza and Ukraine crises have made this performative dimension particularly visible. They have generated emergency meetings, veto explanations, presidential addresses, legal reports, humanitarian appeals, sanctions announcements, and media statements. In these discursive arenas, words become instruments of alignment, accusation, justification, and pressure. A formulation such as “this Council was unable to act” is not a neutral report; it assigns failure. A directive such as “you must stop” does not merely advise; it reduces the addressee’s room for maneuver. A metaphor such as “a stain on the conscience of humanity” transforms institutional inaction into a durable moral mark.

This article approaches diplomatic discourse as a pragma-argumentative object. The expression designates the intersection between language as action and language as oriented reasoning. Pragmatics makes it possible to study speech acts, implied meanings, presuppositions, facework, contextual anchoring and indirectness. Argumentation theory makes it possible to describe the inferential paths by which speakers lead audiences from facts to obligations, from values to conclusions, and from institutional scenes to political legitimacy.

The study focuses on two speeches delivered in United Nations settings in September 2025. The first is the statement by Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, after the failure of a Security Council draft resolution on Gaza. The second is Donald J. Trump’s address to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2025. These two speeches do not belong to the same rhetorical tradition and do not construct the same relationship to multilateralism. Their comparison is therefore methodologically useful because it reveals two distinct ways of converting international crisis into linguistic action.

The central research question is the following: how do pragmatic and argumentative mechanisms reveal ideological presuppositions, strategies of legitimization and forms of linguistic pressure in contemporary diplomatic discourse on Gaza and Ukraine? Three subsidiary questions structure the investigation: which speech acts dominate each discourse; how do implicature, presupposition and face-threatening acts shape the relation between speaker and audience; and which topoi, metaphors, connectors and argumentative scales guide the audience toward the intended conclusion?

The article pursues four objectives. First, it clarifies diplomatic discourse as an authorized institutional practice rather than as a merely decorative language of protocol. Second, it develops an integrated framework combining pragmatics and argumentation. Third, it applies this framework to two crisis speeches in order to identify their dominant mechanisms. Fourth, it demonstrates that diplomatic discourse is a key site for the production of responsibility, legitimacy and authority in international relations.

The contribution of the study is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, it brings together frameworks that are often mobilized separately: Austin and Searle’s theory of speech acts, Grice’s implicature, Brown and Levinson’s face theory, Anscombre and Ducrot’s argumentative orientation, and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s topoi. Empirically, it offers a comparative analysis of two institutional voices: a legal and moral discourse of accusation and solidarity, and a sovereign-populist discourse of command and delegitimization.

1. Conceptual and analytical framework

1.1 Diplomatic discourse as authorized institutional speech

Diplomatic discourse is formed by the encounter between two fields: discourse and diplomacy. Discourse, in linguistic analysis, is not merely a sequence of sentences; it is a situated practice involving participants, norms, genres, institutions and effects. Diplomacy, for its part, is a regulated practice through which states and international organizations manage relations, conflicts, negotiations and agreements. Diplomatic discourse therefore refers to the institutional use of language by actors authorized to speak in the name of political entities.

This authorization is decisive. When an ambassador speaks before the Security Council or a head of state addresses the General Assembly, the utterance is not received as a private opinion. It is interpreted as an institutional act anchored in a state position. The felicity of the act depends not only on grammar but also on authority, venue, procedure and recognition. In this sense, diplomatic discourse is closer to a legally and politically consequential practice than to ordinary public commentary.

The language of diplomacy is often associated with mitigation, indirectness and protocol. These features are real, but they should not be interpreted as signs of weakness. Hedges, modal verbs, passive constructions, formulaic openings, procedural references and cautious qualifications are means by which speakers defend interests while keeping channels of negotiation open. Diplomatic language is therefore a discourse of equilibrium: it must make positions visible without always making confrontation irreversible.

International crises disturb this equilibrium. When mass violence, military invasion, starvation, occupation, hostage-taking, veto politics or sanctions are at stake, the pressure to speak becomes inseparable from the pressure to act. Diplomatic discourse then oscillates between restraint and denunciation. It may preserve institutional form while intensifying moral force. It may appear polite at the surface while performing an accusation at the illocutionary level.

This is why diplomatic discourse requires analysis beyond lexical content. It is not sufficient to list themes such as peace, security, sovereignty, aggression, genocide, energy or migration. The analyst must ask what these terms do in context: which roles they distribute, which responsibilities they presuppose, which policies they legitimize, and which alternatives they exclude.

1.2 Pragmatics: speech acts, implicature, presupposition and face

The first analytical pillar is speech act theory. Austin’s central insight that saying can amount to doing is especially relevant to diplomacy. Recognition, condemnation, warning, refusal, promise, support, withdrawal, and accusation may be accomplished through utterance when the institutional conditions are satisfied. Searle’s classification of assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations offers a useful taxonomy, provided that the analyst remains attentive to indirect force.

In diplomatic discourse, one utterance frequently performs several acts at once. An assertion may function as an accusation; an apology may function as a reproach; a question may function as a denial; and a promise may function as a threat. The distinction between locutionary content, illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect is therefore essential. The locutionary content is what is said; the illocutionary force is what the utterance performs; the perlocutionary effect is what the speaker seeks to produce in the audience.

Conversational implicature is equally important. Following Grice, communication is guided by expectations of quantity, quality, relation and manner. Diplomatic speakers often exploit these expectations by saying more than informationally required, less than politically expected, or by shifting relevance from procedure to morality. Such operations do not necessarily indicate communicative failure. They may be deliberate strategies designed to produce implied meanings stronger than direct assertion.

Presupposition frames certain propositions as already accepted. When a speaker says that a Council was unable to stop an aggression, the wording may presuppose that the aggression exists, that the Council has a responsibility to stop it, and that its failure is politically meaningful. When a speaker demands that allies stop purchasing energy from Russia, the directive presupposes that such purchases are relevant to the war’s continuation. Presuppositions reduce the burden of proof by presenting some premises as already shared.

Face theory provides a further tool. Brown and Levinson distinguish between positive face, the desire to be approved and respected, and negative face, the desire for autonomy and freedom from imposition. Diplomatic discourse usually protects both faces through mitigation. In moments of acute crisis, however, face-threatening acts may become argumentative resources. Public shaming, forced choice, direct command and institutional delegitimization increase the cost of inaction or disagreement.

1.3 Argumentation in language: connectors, topoi, scales, metaphor and polyphony

Argumentation in language studies how linguistic forms orient reasoning. Connectors such as “because”, “but”, “rather”, “therefore” and “either/or” do not merely link clauses; they organize argumentative movement. Operators such as “must”, “immediately”, “never”, “only” and “again” strengthen or restrict the possible conclusions that can be drawn from a proposition. In diplomatic discourse, these small forms often carry high political weight.

Topoi are general inferential principles that connect premises to conclusions. The topos of responsibility may be formulated as follows: whoever has the capacity to prevent harm must act. The topos of institutional failure states that an institution that cannot fulfill its mandate in a crisis loses legitimacy. The topos of sovereign protection states that a leader must protect the nation against threats. These topoi are rarely spelled out, yet they guide interpretation and make conclusions appear natural.

Argumentative scales arrange propositions in order of increasing force. A discourse may move from the killing of civilians to the destruction of hospitals, then to starvation and the weaponization of aid. This movement does not merely accumulate facts; it constructs a hierarchy of gravity. Once the highest point of the scale is reached, inaction appears not only insufficient but morally impossible. The scale transforms description into obligation.

Metaphor is also argumentative. To describe institutional failure as a stain is to make it visible, durable and shameful. To describe humanitarian aid as a weapon is to reverse the semantic value of relief and to suggest intentionality. To describe migration as an invasion is to move from an administrative or humanitarian frame to a war frame. Metaphors, therefore, do not adorn diplomatic discourse; they reconfigure the field of possible response.

Polyphony completes this apparatus. Diplomatic discourse rarely speaks with a single voice. It cites reports, invokes international law, addresses victims, anticipates opponents, echoes public opinion and performs national identity. Identifying embedded voices makes it possible to distinguish between the speaker’s position, the authority cited, and the interpretive work performed by the analyst.

1.4 Position within political and critical discourse studies

The proposed approach also belongs to a broader tradition of political and critical discourse studies. This tradition examines how language contributes to the production of power, legitimacy, exclusion and institutional authority. The present article does not use critical discourse analysis as a slogan; it draws from it the principle that political meanings are not simply expressed by discourse but organized through discourse. This principle is particularly relevant in international institutions where speakers compete to define the same event through different normative frames.

Chilton’s work on political discourse shows that political language often organizes space, time and morality through deictic positioning. Speakers construct a political “we”, identify threatening or suffering “others”, define a time of urgency or decline, and place the audience within a moral geometry. This insight is useful for both corpora. The Algerian statement constructs a “we” of solidarity and responsibility; the U.S. address constructs a “we” of sovereign restoration opposed to institutional weakness and external threat.

Fairclough’s contribution is also important because it links discourse to social change and institutional practice. Diplomatic discourse is not isolated from the political order in which it circulates. It participates in the reproduction or contestation of institutional authority. When the Security Council is perceived as failing its mandate, the discourse challenges the institution’s legitimacy from within. When the United Nations is represented as ineffective, the discourse shifts legitimacy toward executive sovereignty.

Van Dijk’s work on discourse and power highlights the role of knowledge, ideology and access. Not all speakers have equal access to global platforms. A head of state or a permanent representative speaks from a position that gives the utterance international circulation and symbolic weight. This does not make the utterance true, but it increases its capacity to shape public and diplomatic agendas. Institutional access is therefore part of the speech’s pragmatic force.

Reisigl and Wodak’s discourse-historical approach is useful for politically sensitive corpora because it insists on contextualization, nomination strategies, predication strategies and argumentation strategies. In the present article, nomination is visible in the way actors are named as victims, institutions, allies, opponents or complicit parties. Predication appears in the qualities attributed to them: courageous, failed, weak, destructive, responsible or negligent. Argumentation connects these labels to conclusions.

The originality of the present article lies in bringing these discourse-analytical concerns into a tighter pragma-argumentative model. Rather than simply identifying ideologies, the analysis asks how specific linguistic mechanisms perform institutional work. It examines how an apology becomes an accusation, how an interrogative becomes a delegitimization, how numbers become pressure, how metaphors become obligations, and how connectors orient the audience toward action.

This position also allows the article to avoid two risks. The first risk is formalism, which would classify speech acts without explaining their political force. The second risk is commentary, which would discuss geopolitical events without demonstrating how language produces meaning. A pragma-argumentative approach holds these dimensions together: it remains linguistically precise while keeping the institutional and political stakes visible.

The article, therefore, contributes to the analysis of diplomatic crisis discourse by offering a model that can be applied beyond the two cases studied here. The same framework could be used to analyze veto explanations, ceasefire debates, sanctions speeches, international court statements, mediation announcements or humanitarian briefings. Its value lies in showing how language becomes an instrument of positioning, pressure and legitimacy within international institutions.

2. Corpus, contextualization and methodology

2.1 Corpus and source control

The corpus is qualitative and deliberately limited. It consists of two institutional speeches delivered in September 2025. The first is Amar Bendjama’s statement at the United Nations Security Council during a debate on Gaza following the failure of a draft ceasefire resolution. The second is Donald J. Trump’s address to the eightieth session of the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2025.

The two texts were selected because they are institutionally comparable but rhetorically contrasting. Both are delivered in United Nations settings, both address international audiences, and both connect crisis to institutional effectiveness. Yet they construct different relations to multilateralism. Bendjama speaks from within the Security Council and condemns its paralysis in order to reactivate responsibility. Trump speaks from the General Assembly platform while questioning the effectiveness of the United Nations and privileging sovereign command.

The corpus is asymmetrical by design. The Algerian statement is centered primarily on Gaza and on the failure of the Council. The U.S. address is wider and connects Ukraine to energy policy, Russia, allied responsibility, tariffs, migration, hostages, and national sovereignty. The comparison is therefore not a symmetrical comparison of two speeches about the same event. It is a comparison of two crisis rhetorics within the same institutional universe.

This asymmetry is scientifically important. A poorly controlled article would claim to compare Gaza and Ukraine equally, even if the textual evidence did not support that balance. The present study instead treats Gaza as the central object of the Algerian statement and Ukraine as one of the strategic nodes in the U.S. address. The question is not whether the two crises are identical, but how institutional speakers transform crisis into linguistic obligation.

Source control is a necessary safeguard. The article analyzes excerpts that circulate through institutional transcripts, translations and media relays. When translation is involved, the analysis focuses on stable pragmatic functions rather than on prosodic or micro-stylistic details. For publication, the official transcript, verbatim record or official video source should be cited directly, and long reproduced excerpts should be avoided unless permitted by editorial policy.

2.2 Coding procedure and analytical reliability

The method follows six steps. First, the institutional situation of each speech is identified: speaker, venue, date, audience, and immediate political trigger. Second, salient utterances are segmented into analytical units. A unit may be a clause, sentence, formula, or short sequence that performs a recognizable pragmatic or argumentative function. Third, each unit is coded according to its primary speech act and, when relevant, its secondary illocutionary force.

Fourth, the analysis identifies implicatures, presuppositions, and face-threatening acts. This step is essential because diplomatic meaning is often indirect. The literal form of an apology, a question, or a statement may conceal a stronger pragmatic operation. Fifth, argumentative connectors, operators, topoi, scales, metaphors, and polyphonic voices are described. Sixth, the two speeches are compared in order to identify their respective economies of legitimacy.

The study does not claim statistical representativeness. Its validity rests on explicit categories, transparent examples and systematic movement from linguistic form to argumentative function. The aim is not to verify the political truth of each claim made by the speakers. It is to show how these claims are organized so that they become persuasive, coercive, accusatory or morally binding.

The analysis also distinguishes between the speaker’s discourse and the analyst’s terminology. Expressions such as genocide, invasion, bias, complicity, destruction or institutional failure may appear as words used by the speaker, as terms cited from reports, or as analytical labels. A rigorous article must not confuse these levels. It must indicate whether a term belongs to the corpus, to a legal source, or to the researcher’s interpretation.

Finally, the method recognizes three limitations. The first is corpus size: two speeches cannot represent all diplomatic discourse on Gaza and Ukraine. The second is translation: pragmatic force may travel across languages, but rhythm, address forms and metaphor may shift. The third is modality: the present article analyzes textual mechanisms and does not study intonation, gesture, camera framing, applause, silence or circulation on social media.

2.3 Delimitation of the comparative object

The comparison developed here must be understood as one of discursive operations rather than a geopolitical equivalence between the two crises. Gaza and Ukraine do not occupy the same legal, historical or humanitarian configuration. The article therefore avoids flattening them into a single political category. What justifies the comparison is not sameness of events, but the presence of two institutional speeches that convert crisis into obligation through identifiable linguistic mechanisms.

This distinction is important for scientific clarity. A thematic comparison would require balanced corpora, comparable speech situations and similar degrees of textual development for each crisis. The present corpus does not meet those conditions and does not claim to do so. Instead, it examines how two speakers, situated within the same broad United Nations universe, use different pragmatic and argumentative resources to define failure, responsibility, and action.

The Algerian statement foregrounds moral accountability and institutional paralysis. Its object is the Security Council’s inability to act in response to Gaza. The U.S. address foregrounds sovereign effectiveness and allied compliance. Its Ukraine-related sequence is embedded in a wider argument about Russian energy, European responsibility and the inadequacy of multilateral institutions. The asymmetry is therefore not a weakness when it is explicitly theorized; it is part of what the article explains.

The comparative object can consequently be formulated as follows: two crisis speeches, two institutional scenes, two constructions of responsibility and two models of diplomatic action. This formulation allows the article to preserve analytical precision while maintaining the broader title’s thematic relevance. It also prevents the text from becoming a simple succession of definitions and examples, because every section contributes to the same comparative problem. The point is not to make the crises interchangeable, but to make visible the linguistic operations through which institutional actors transform crises into claims, obligations, accusations and commands. This is precisely what gives the article its coherence: the comparison is conducted at the level of discursive force, not at the level of event equivalence.

3. Results: pragma-argumentative mechanisms in the two corpora

3.1 Algerian statement on Gaza: apology, accusation and obligation

The Algerian statement is organized around a striking rhetorical reversal. It begins with an apology addressed to Palestinians, not to the Council. In ordinary diplomatic interaction, an apology would be expected to reduce tension and restore harmony. Here, however, the apology becomes an instrument of accusation. The speaker apologizes for an institutional failure, thereby making that failure more visible and more intolerable.

The repeated sequence “forgive us because this Council was unable” is the central macro-act of the discourse. At the surface level, it belongs to the category of expressives. At the illocutionary level, however, it performs an indirect act of reproach against the Security Council and against the actors who prevented action. The power of the act comes precisely from this reversal: the speaker assumes shame in order to expose the shame of others.

The repetition violates the maxim of quantity strategically. Each occurrence does not add an entirely new syntactic structure, but it adds a new category of victims or a new dimension of suffering. Children, women, elderly persons, medical workers, journalists, humanitarian workers, displaced people and starving civilians become part of an accumulating moral inventory. The repetition, therefore, transforms redundancy into argumentative pressure.

The assertive sequences provide evidential support for condemnation. Victim counts, references to destroyed infrastructure, references to famine and references to reports are presented as facts that should compel action. Even when numerical claims require verification through official sources, their discursive function is clear: they transform the crisis from an abstract humanitarian emergency into a structured list of violations. The list becomes an argumentative scale.

The statement also constructs a complex deictic field. The pronoun “we” shifts among Algeria, the Algerian people, the speaker as a Council member, and the international community. This oscillation allows the speaker to occupy several positions at once: institutional participant, critic of institutional failure, representative of Algeria, and voice of solidarity with Palestinians. The addressees are also multiple: the Council is the formal audience, while Palestinians are the ethical audience.

The reference to history introduces a future judge into the discourse. History is personified as an authority whose judgment cannot be vetoed. This metaphor displaces accountability from the present diplomatic chamber to a longer moral temporality. In the immediate scene, a resolution may be blocked; in the historical scene, actions and failures are preserved as moral evidence. The metaphor thus reduces the value of speeches and elevates action as the criterion of legitimacy.

The formulation of forced choice constitutes the culminating move of the statement. By presenting only two options – act or be counted among the complicit – the speaker eliminates neutrality as a valid diplomatic position. Abstention, delay, procedural caution and rhetorical concern are reclassified as morally consequential. Inaction is no longer the absence of action; it becomes a form of participation in wrongdoing.

From the perspective of politeness theory, the speech is exceptional because it suspends several ordinary norms of diplomatic mitigation. The positive face of the Council is threatened by the assertion of failure; the negative face of states is threatened by the obligation to act; the moral face of the international community is threatened by the metaphor of the stain. This is not a lack of rhetorical control. It is a deliberate strategy to increase the cost of inaction.

Polyphony strengthens the accusation. The speaker does not rely only on Algeria’s national voice. He invokes reports and international legal language, thereby introducing an external voice that supports the moral claim. This prevents the speech from being reducible to emotional denunciation. The legal voice stabilizes the accusation; the moral voice gives it urgency.

The Algerian statement can therefore be described as a legal and moral discursive apparatus. It combines lamentation, evidence, reproach, obligation, shame, and commitment. Its purpose is not simply to make suffering visible. It seeks to make institutional inaction indefensible and to transform the Council from a passive venue into an accused actor that may recover legitimacy only through action.

“Forgive us… because this Council was unable to stop this aggression.”
Corpus 1, Algerian statement, working English translation
“History will not judge our speeches, but it will judge our actions.”
Corpus 1, Algerian statement, working English translation
“Each one of us must choose either to act… or to be considered among those complicit.”
Corpus 1, Algerian statement, working English translation

3.2. U.S. address at the General Assembly: sovereign command and delegitimization

Trump’s address is characterized by a tension between institutional setting and anti-institutional rhetoric. The speech is delivered before the United Nations General Assembly, yet it repeatedly questions the usefulness of the United Nations and presents international institutions as ineffective. This tension is performative: the speaker uses the multilateral platform’s visibility while diminishing the platform’s own authority.

The dominant argumentative architecture is comparative. The speech contrasts a past associated with prosperity, peace, respect and border control with a present associated with weakness, disorder, ridicule, war and institutional failure. This contrast constitutes a topos of restoration. The implied conclusion is that the solution to present disorder lies in the return of the leadership model embodied by the speaker.

Assertive acts are central to this architecture. Statements about world prosperity, American respect, ended wars, institutional inefficiency, migration or energy policy are not merely informative. They are arranged as premises in a broader argument about strength and weakness. The assertive form presents itself as a factual description, while the argumentative orientation constructs a hierarchy between decisive leadership and failed governance.

Directive acts are the most visible form of power in the address. The demand that European actors stop purchasing energy from Russia is particularly important for the Ukraine dimension of the corpus. The directive is not framed as a negotiable recommendation; it is presented as an urgent necessity. The adverb “immediately” suppresses delay as a legitimate diplomatic option. The directive thus converts a geopolitical claim into an obligation imposed on allies.

This directive is also a face-threatening act. It treats allied governments as actors who are destroying their own countries and who must be corrected. The addressee is not positioned as an equal partner in deliberation but as a subordinate actor whose policy inconsistency must be exposed. In this respect, the speech departs from traditional diplomatic mitigation and adopts the language of hierarchical command.

Commissive acts reinforce the coercive structure. Commitments to tariffs, sanctions, retaliation or destructive consequences are not promises of cooperation. They are conditional threats. Their perlocutionary aim is to make future punishment effective before it is implemented. A threat is pragmatically successful when it changes the addressee’s present calculation by making the future cost credible.

Expressive acts also have an argumentative function. Mocking labels, belittling evaluations and attacks on previous administrations do not merely express emotion. They downgrade opponents’ positive face and redistribute credibility. The speaker is associated with strength, effectiveness and restoration, while opponents and institutions are associated with weakness, incompetence and ridicule. This shifts part of the argument from policy to character.

The interrogative questioning the purpose of the United Nations is not a genuine request for information. It is an indirect act of delegitimization. The institution is placed in a defensive position and its symbolic face is threatened. The speaker implicitly claims that if the institution cannot fulfill its function, direct sovereign action becomes more legitimate than multilateral deliberation.

The metaphors and evaluative terms in the address are organized around crisis and restoration. Migration is associated with invasion or destruction; energy policy is framed as national survival; tariffs are presented as tools of defense; and institutional speech is contrasted with executive action. These metaphors reorganize diverse policy domains into a single antagonistic narrative: sovereign strength against destructive globalism or institutional weakness.

The U.S. address, therefore, operates as a hybrid genre. It is at once a diplomatic speech, campaign rhetoric, institutional critique and performance of executive power. Its audiences are multiple: delegates in the hall, allies, adversaries, domestic supporters, opponents and global media. This multi-addressing explains why its diplomatic form is repeatedly interrupted by populist confrontation.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?”
Corpus 2, U.S. address, 23 September 2025
“You must immediately stop all purchases of energy from Russia.”
Corpus 2, U.S. address, 23 September 2025
“Release the hostages now.”
Corpus 2, U.S. address, 23 September 2025

3.3. From linguistic form to political obligation

The two corpora show that diplomatic discourse produces obligation through different linguistic routes. In the Algerian statement, obligation emerges from suffering, institutional failure, and moral accountability. In the U.S. address, obligation emerges from sovereign authority, causal warning, and the threat of consequences. Both discourses aim to reduce the acceptability of inaction, but they do so through different economies of legitimacy.

The Algerian discourse transforms apology into accusation, evidence into condemnation, and history into a judge. Its central conclusion is collective: the Council and the international community must act because failure has become morally and institutionally intolerable. The U.S. discourse transforms assertion into restoration, directive into command, and institutional critique into self-legitimation. Its central conclusion is hierarchical: allies and institutions must align with the speaker’s model of action.

The comparison also shows that diplomatic discourse is not simply polite speech. In both cases, the most significant effects come from the strategic violation or suspension of expected diplomatic forms. Bendjama uses an apologetic form to produce accusation. Trump uses a multilateral stage to produce anti-institutional pressure. The institutional scene is therefore not a neutral container; it is part of the speech’s meaning.

These findings confirm the value of combining pragmatics and argumentation. Speech act analysis identifies what each utterance performs. Implicature and presupposition reveal what the utterance makes available without explicit assertion. Face theory explains why certain formulations intensify pressure. Argumentation theory shows how connectors, metaphors, topoi, and scales lead the audience toward specific conclusions. The analytical gain lies in the combination of these levels.

Table 1. Speech acts in the Algerian statement

Discursive unit	Speech act	Direct/indirect	Illocutionary and argumentative force
Opening apology	Expressive opening/stance declaration	Direct at surface level	Frames the speech as a moral response rather than as a routine procedural intervention.
“Forgive us because this Council was unable…”	Expressive used as accusation	Indirect	Transforms apology into reproach and assigns responsibility to the Council.
Victim counts and categories	Assertive	Direct	Builds an evidential basis for condemnation and for the subsequent directive.
“History will judge our actions”	Assertive with directive effect	Indirect	Directs the audience toward action by invoking future moral judgment.
“Read the report…”	Directive	Direct	Moves the audience from emotion to institutional verification.
“The international community must assume its responsibilities”	Directive	Direct	Imposes legal and moral obligation on addressees.
“We will not surrender”	Commissive	Direct	Commits Algeria to continued diplomatic and political struggle.

Table 2. Pragmatic and argumentative mechanisms in the Algerian statement

Mechanism	Example	Pragmatic value	Argumentative effect
Quantity maxim flouted	Repetition of apology	Excessive repetition is meaningful rather than accidental.	Accumulates guilt, making institutional failure unavoidable.
Presupposition	“The Council was unable…”	Presupposes a duty and a capacity to act.	Shifts the burden from incapacity to responsibility.
Face threat	Forced choice between action and complicity	Threatens positive and negative face.	Eliminates neutrality as a valid diplomatic position.
Polyphony	Reference to investigative reports	Introduces legal and institutional authority.	Strengthens the accusation beyond national opinion.
Metaphor	“Stain on the conscience of humanity”	Moralizes institutional failure.	Transforms inaction into historical shame.

Table 3. Speech acts and topoi in the U.S. address

Discursive unit	Speech act	Dominant topos	Effect
World prosperity during the first term	Assertive	Comparison between order and decline	Creates nostalgia and legitimizes return to the speaker’s leadership model.
Questioning the purpose of the United Nations	Interrogative as indirect assertion	Institutional failure	Delegitimizes multilateral action.
Stopping Russian energy purchases	Directive	Cause and consequence	Frames allied energy policy as enabling war and requiring immediate change.
Tariffs and retaliation	Commissive/warning	Sovereign retaliation	Turns trade into a coercive diplomatic instrument.
Belittling opponents	Expressive	Incompetence of adversary	Weakens opponents’ credibility through face attack.

Table 4. Comparative synthesis

Dimension	Algerian statement	U.S. address	Interpretive implication
Primary target	Security Council paralysis	UN effectiveness, allies and opponents	Both criticize institutions but for different ends.
Dominant legitimacy	Legal-moral responsibility	Sovereign leadership and force	Two distinct economies of legitimacy.
Main act	Apology as accusation	Command as diplomacy	Indirect moral pressure contrasts with direct hierarchical pressure.
Dominant metaphor	Stain, conscience, history, weaponized aid	Invasion, destruction, laughter, strength	Ethical memory contrasts with existential combat.
Expected action	Collective institutional intervention	Compliance with U.S. directives	Multilateral obligation contrasts with sovereign pressure.

4. Discussion: two economies of diplomatic legitimacy

4.1 Legal and moral legitimacy and sovereign-populist legitimacy

The comparison reveals two economies of legitimacy. In the Algerian statement, legitimacy is constructed through solidarity with victims, legal and moral obligation, and exposure of institutional failure. The speaker does not present himself as the solution. He presents the Council’s inaction as the problem and seeks to reactivate the Council’s mandate by increasing the moral cost of paralysis.

In the U.S. address, legitimacy is constructed through personal leadership, national sovereignty and the contrast between action and institutional weakness. The speaker repeatedly attributes effectiveness to himself or to the United States under his leadership. Institutions become legitimate only insofar as they align with decisive sovereign action. When they appear slow, deliberative or ineffective, they are discursively downgraded.

Both discourses criticize institutional failure, but the political direction of the critique differs. Bendjama criticizes the Council in order to shame it back into responsibility. Trump criticizes the United Nations in order to elevate executive sovereignty and direct pressure. The first discourse seeks to restore institutional obligation; the second seeks to subordinate institutional legitimacy to sovereign performance.

This distinction matters for discourse studies because it shows that the same thematic category – institutional failure – can orient toward different conclusions. Failure may justify reform, reactivation, bypassing, domination or replacement. The analyst must therefore avoid thematic reduction and examine the argumentative direction of each formulation.

4.2 Diplomatic discourse beyond politeness and protocol

The results challenge the common assumption that diplomatic discourse is defined primarily by politeness. Politeness remains an important convention, but the most significant crisis speeches often work by strategically suspending it. Bendjama’s discourse is formally anchored in the Security Council, yet it performs strong face-threatening acts through accusation, shame and forced choice. Trump’s discourse occupies a formal UN platform, yet it repeatedly attacks institutional and allied faces through command and ridicule.

The issue, therefore, is not whether a speech is polite or impolite in an ordinary sense. The issue is how facework participates in the production of legitimacy. In the Algerian case, face threat is justified by the gravity of suffering and the alleged failure of the Council. In the U.S. case, face threat is justified by the speaker’s claim to effectiveness, sovereignty and restoration. In both cases, politeness is subordinated to argumentative force.

This finding also clarifies the role of emotion. The Algerian speech mobilizes compassion, shame and indignation; the U.S. speech mobilizes pride, anger, ridicule and fear. These emotions are not external to argumentation. They contribute to the force of topoi. Shame supports the topos of responsibility; fear supports the topos of sovereign protection; ridicule supports the topos of incompetence; indignation supports the topos of urgent action.

A high-level analysis must therefore avoid the opposition between rational argument and emotional rhetoric. Diplomatic discourse often combines both. Numbers, legal reports, institutional mandates and causal claims function alongside metaphors, vocatives, repetition and evaluative language. The scientific task is to show how these resources are combined, not to classify the discourse as either rational or emotional.

4.3 Scientific safeguards for politically sensitive discourse analysis

Politically sensitive corpora require particular methodological discipline. The analyst must not reproduce the speaker’s ideological position as if it were an analytical conclusion. Terms such as genocide, invasion, complicity, bias or destruction must be attributed carefully. They may belong to the corpus, to a cited legal authority, to political accusation, or to the analyst’s interpretation. Confusing these levels weakens scientific credibility.

The study also shows the importance of corpus delimitation. A comparison of Gaza and Ukraine cannot be valid if it assumes symmetry where the texts are asymmetrical. The Algerian statement is Gaza-centered; the U.S. address treats Ukraine through the broader prism of Russian energy, allied responsibility and coercive diplomacy. Recognizing this asymmetry strengthens the article because it prevents overclaiming and clarifies the actual object studied.

Source verification is equally essential. Institutional speeches circulate through official transcripts, live interpretation, edited videos, press releases, translations and media quotations. A publishable article must specify which version is analyzed. It should avoid reproducing long documentary material when short excerpts suffice, and cite official transcripts or stable institutional sources wherever possible.

Finally, the article’s contribution should be understood as linguistic and discourse-analytical. It does not adjudicate the legal truth of every claim. It shows how claims are formulated, intensified, presupposed, justified and directed toward action. This distinction protects analytical distance without neutralizing the ethical stakes that make diplomatic crisis discourse powerful.

4.4 Extended coding of the Algerian statement

The first coding layer concerns the macro-act of the speech. Although the statement contains several local acts, its global force is condemnatory. This condemnation is not delivered in a single declarative formula; it is progressively constructed. The apology initiates the moral frame, the repeated causal clauses identify the institutional failure, the evidential list gives substance to the accusation, and the final forced choice transforms the accusation into an obligation. The macro-act is therefore distributed across the whole text.

A second layer concerns the relation between speaker and addressee. The speaker does not simply say that the Council has failed; he stages the failure in the presence of those who are supposed to remedy it. The Council is simultaneously the institutional venue, the formal addressee and the object of accusation. This triple positioning intensifies the discourse because the accused institution is made to hear its own indictment from within its own chamber.

The vocative address to Palestinians is a decisive rhetorical operation. It displaces the center of gravity from institutional procedure to human suffering. By directly addressing Palestinian men and women, the speaker makes them present within a room where they may not possess direct decision-making power. This is a form of symbolic representation: the victims are not only referred to but also constructed as the ethical audience before whom the Council is judged.

The repeated causal connector “because” performs more than an explanatory function. It links the apology to a series of institutional failures and transforms each failure into a reason for shame. In ordinary argumentation, “because” may serve to justify a claim. Here, it justifies an expressive act whose deep force is accusatory. The connector, therefore, reverses the expected orientation of apology: instead of repairing social harmony, it exposes the reasons why harmony is impossible without action.

The argumentation also depends on a scale of vulnerability. The sequence of victims begins with children and continues through women, elderly people, doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarian workers and the starving population. This order does not merely enumerate categories. It constructs a social totality: childhood, family, age, care, information, humanitarian assistance and survival itself. The implied conclusion is that the attack concerns not only military confrontation but the conditions of collective life.

The use of numbers participates in an evidential rhetoric. Figures are not presented as statistical objects to be analyzed independently; they are mobilized as argumentative intensifiers. Their function is to prevent the crisis from being treated as an abstract disagreement among states. Numbers give the argument weight and apparent precision. At the same time, a publishable analysis must attribute them carefully to the speaker or to verified sources, since the article studies their discursive function rather than independently validating each figure.

The metaphor of aid transformed into a weapon is one of the strongest devices in the statement. It performs a semantic reversal: what is conventionally associated with relief, survival and humanitarian neutrality is reclassified as an instrument of coercion. This reversal heightens the gravity of the accusation, suggesting that the humanitarian order itself has been perverted. The metaphor, therefore, links material deprivation to moral and legal responsibility.

The metaphor of the stain extends the accusation beyond the immediate meeting. A stain is visible, durable and difficult to erase. By placing the stain on the conscience of humanity, the speaker universalizes the failure and removes it from the narrow field of diplomatic procedure. The Council’s paralysis becomes part of a broader moral memory. This is why the metaphor prepares the later reference to history as a judge.

The expression “history will judge” functions as a higher evaluative instance. It introduces a temporality that exceeds the present vote, the immediate debate and the procedural outcome. The speaker implies that diplomatic language cannot protect actors from later accountability if it is not accompanied by action. In this respect, the statement implicitly critiques performative emptiness: speeches without decisions will not suffice.

The final forced choice is the most coercive argumentative structure in the statement. By opposing action to complicity, the speaker cancels intermediate positions. Neutrality, abstention, silence, caution and procedural waiting are absorbed into the negative pole if they do not lead to action. The argumentative force lies not only in the severity of the word “complicity” but also in the binary structure that leaves the audience no third position.

4.5 Extended coding of the U.S. address

The U.S. address also contains a distributed macro-act, but its organization differs from the Algerian statement. Its global force is not moral accusation on behalf of victims; it is the performance of sovereign effectiveness. The speaker repeatedly contrasts his own capacity to act with the alleged weakness of institutions, opponents and allies. The macro-act is therefore self-legitimating: it seeks to make the speaker’s authority appear necessary because others have failed.

The opening comparative assertions establish the temporal frame. A past associated with peace and prosperity is opposed to a present associated with disorder. This contrast is not merely autobiographical. It functions as an argumentative topos: if order existed under one leadership model and disorder followed its interruption, then the restoration of that model becomes the implied solution. The speaker thus transforms memory into political evidence.

The personalization of diplomatic effectiveness is central. Whereas traditional multilateral discourse distributes responsibility among institutions, coalitions, and procedures, this address concentrates agency in the figure of the leader. Claims about ending wars, restoring respect, or imposing tariffs are presented as the result of personal decisions. This structure weakens the symbolic role of collective diplomacy and strengthens the topos of exceptional leadership.

The interrogation about the purpose of the United Nations is especially significant. Grammatically, it is a question. Pragmatically, it is an accusation. Argumentatively, it prepares the conclusion that the institution does not fulfill its function. Because the question is asked before a global audience within the institution itself, it also performs public face threat. The United Nations is made to appear unable to answer the criterion of usefulness.

The Ukraine-related sequence is organized through a causal directive. The instruction to stop purchases of Russian energy presupposes that such purchases sustain the adversary and endanger European countries. The directive, therefore, rests on a causal chain: energy purchases support Russia; support for Russia prolongs danger; danger destroys countries; therefore, purchases must cease immediately. The wording compresses this chain into the imperative “must.”

The adverb “immediately” has strong argumentative value. It not only intensifies the directive but also delegitimizes delay. In diplomatic contexts, time is often used to negotiate, consult, verify or build consensus. Here, time is framed as danger. Any delay becomes evidence of irrationality or self-destruction. The directive, therefore, transforms temporal urgency into a constraint on allied autonomy.

The expression of friendship toward European addressees does not cancel the face threat; it frames it. By addressing them as friends and then accusing them of destroying their countries, the speaker combines solidarity with domination. This is a typical feature of hierarchical alliance discourse: closeness is invoked not to equalize the relation but to intensify the legitimacy of correction. The ally is corrected precisely because it is called a friend.

Commissive threats concerning tariffs or retaliation function as pre-emptive acts. They project a future sanction in order to produce a present behavioral effect. This is a central mechanism of coercive diplomacy: the utterance does not merely describe a future action; it attempts to make the threat operative before it is implemented. The credibility of the speaker’s willingness to act is therefore part of the speech act’s success conditions.

The speech’s expressive dimension is not ornamental. Mockery, ridicule, and belittling labels reduce the positive face of opponents and institutions. These expressive acts support the broader argument that failure is not only technical or procedural but also personal and moral. Opponents are not merely wrong; they are weak, incompetent, or ridiculous. This personalization is central to populist diplomatic rhetoric.

The address ultimately transforms multiple policy domains into a single antagonistic scenario. Migration, energy, tariffs, wars, hostages, and institutional ineffectiveness are not treated as separate issues requiring separate deliberations. They are woven into a single narrative of national restoration against external disorder and institutional weakness. This narrative is what gives the speech its rhetorical unity despite its thematic dispersion.

4.6 Methodological consolidation and article-level contribution

The analysis confirms that abstract quality alone is not sufficient for a high-level article in international discourse studies. The manuscript must also present a stable title, precise metadata, a clearly identified corpus, a reproducible method, an explicit contribution, and a discussion that moves beyond thematic description. These requirements are not merely editorial; they determine whether the study can be assessed, replicated, and situated within an identifiable scholarly field.

The title is now anchored in the article’s actual object. Rather than announcing an unlimited inquiry into all discourses of the Gaza and Ukraine crises, it specifies the institutional corpus examined: Algerian and U.S. speech in United Nations settings. This precision is necessary because a scientific title must reflect the data analyzed, the disciplinary angle adopted, and the analytical contribution claimed.

The abstracts also perform a methodological function. They identify the research object, the corpus, the theoretical approach, the main findings, and the contribution. This structure is essential because readers and reviewers often enter the article through the abstract. A purely thematic abstract would state that diplomacy and language matter; a scientific abstract must indicate what was analyzed, how it was analyzed, and what the analysis demonstrates.

The methodological section clarifies that the article is neither quantitative nor corpus-statistical, and that it does not offer a legal adjudication of the conflicts. It is a qualitative discourse analysis based on close reading and theoretical triangulation. This clarification prevents methodological ambiguity and protects the article against claims broader than the selected corpus can sustain.

The order of the sections also supports the scientific reasoning. Theory precedes method, method precedes results, results precede discussion, and discussion precedes conclusion. This progression allows the reader to follow the movement from conceptual tools to corpus analysis and from corpus analysis to comparative interpretation. It also prevents the impression that the article is a superposition of definitions, comments, and examples.

The reduced number of level-one headings gives the article a clearer argumentative hierarchy. Concepts that could have appeared as independent top-level sections are now subordinated to the theoretical, methodological, analytical, or discussion framework to which they belong. This hierarchy is not cosmetic; it signals which elements are major argumentative stages and which elements function as tools or subcomponents.

The analytical tables are integrated into the results section rather than placed after the conclusion. They now function as evidence of the coding procedure and as syntheses of the comparison. This placement improves readability and aligns the tables with their scientific role: making the relation between textual units, pragmatic categories, and argumentative effects visible.

The bibliography is selective and functional. The most important references are those that support the concepts actually used in the analysis: speech acts, implicature, politeness, argumentation, discourse, power, and political rhetoric. Additional references can be added only if their bibliographic data are complete and if they contribute directly to the theoretical or methodological framework.

The distinction between corpus voice and analytical voice is a further condition of reliability. Politically sensitive terms are treated as discursive operators, attributed formulations, or analytical categories rather than as unmarked assertions. This distinction is essential for scientific credibility because the article analyzes how language produces responsibility and legitimacy; it does not substitute itself for a legal tribunal or a diplomatic fact-checking report.

The final form is therefore not a compressed version of the initial manuscript but a restructured scholarly article. Redundancies, template residues, and editorial intrusions have been removed, while analytical density, methodological visibility, and argumentative continuity have been reinforced. The article now presents a coherent and publishable architecture without sacrificing the substantive interpretive work required by the original submission.

4.7 Implications for discourse analysis and international communication

The first implication concerns the status of institutional speech. Diplomatic discourse should not be treated as a secondary reflection of decisions already made elsewhere. It participates in decision-making by defining what must be recognized, what may be ignored, what becomes urgent and what can still be postponed. The speech act does not replace material action, but it contributes to the conditions under which material action becomes thinkable or defensible.

The second implication concerns the relationship between language and responsibility. Responsibility is not only named; it is linguistically distributed. Pronouns, passive constructions, causal connectors, and evaluative metaphors determine whether agency is attributed to a state, an institution, a leader, an anonymous system, or a collective audience. In the Algerian statement, responsibility is concentrated on the Council’s failure. In the U.S. address, responsibility is assigned to allies, institutions, and previous administrations.

The third implication concerns the construction of urgency. Urgency is not a purely temporal fact; it is produced by linguistic forms that make delay appear costly. Repetition, direct address, imperatives, adverbs such as “now” and “immediately,” and references to irreversible harm all create a compressed temporal horizon. In crisis diplomacy, controlling time is part of controlling the argument.

The fourth implication concerns the status of evidence. In both corpora, evidence is not presented as neutral data detached from action. It is organized to support a conclusion. Numbers in the Algerian statement lead toward condemnation and responsibility. Causal claims in the U.S. address lead toward directives and compliance. The discourse analyst must therefore examine not only the presence of evidence but also its argumentative destination.

The fifth implication concerns the role of institutional critique. Criticizing an institution can serve opposite purposes. It may aim to restore the institution’s mandate, as in the Algerian statement, or to reduce the institution’s authority in favor of sovereign action, as in the U.S. address. This difference shows that institutional critique has no fixed political meaning outside its argumentative orientation.

The sixth implication concerns multilingual circulation. Diplomatic speech is rarely confined to its language of delivery. It is translated, interpreted, subtitled, summarized and circulated by media outlets. Each circulation may preserve some pragmatic forces while modifying others. Repetition, vocatives and metaphors are particularly sensitive to translation. Future research should therefore compare official originals, simultaneous interpretation and published translations.

The seventh implication concerns publicness. United Nations speeches are addressed to delegates, but they are also delivered to broader audiences. The Algerian statement addresses Palestinians, international opinion, and member states simultaneously. The U.S. address speaks to allies, opponents, domestic supporters and the global media. Multi-addressing explains why diplomatic discourse increasingly combines institutional form with media-oriented force.

The eighth implication concerns genre hybridity. The U.S. address illustrates how diplomatic speech can absorb elements of campaign rhetoric, media performance and populist antagonism. The Algerian statement illustrates how diplomatic speech can absorb elements of lament, testimony and moral indictment. Crisis discourse therefore destabilizes strict genre boundaries and creates hybrid forms adapted to high-visibility international conflict.

The ninth implication concerns analytical ethics. Studying diplomatic discourse on war, famine, hostages, occupation or sanctions requires sensitivity without abandoning distance. The analyst should not neutralize suffering by reducing everything to rhetoric, but neither should the analyst transform the article into advocacy. The scientific balance consists in examining how suffering, law, sovereignty and authority are linguistically organized.

The tenth implication concerns editorial evaluation. Articles on current geopolitical crises are vulnerable to rapid obsolescence and political contestation. Their durability depends on method. If the article merely comments on events, it ages quickly. If it identifies mechanisms of speech acts, presupposition, face threat, metaphor and argumentation, it remains scientifically useful even as political circumstances change.

The eleventh implication concerns the teaching of discourse analysis. The two corpora can be used to show students how a single utterance can combine multiple levels of meaning. An apology can accuse, a question can delegitimize, a number can command, a metaphor can judge, and a directive can redefine an alliance. Such examples demonstrate why discourse analysis requires both linguistic precision and contextual competence.

The final implication concerns the concept of power. Power in diplomatic discourse is not limited to explicit threats or formal votes. It is also present in the ability to name, frame, classify, shame, command, presuppose and make a conclusion appear unavoidable. This is why the study of language is not peripheral to international relations. It is one of the ways in which international relations become intelligible and actionable.

Conclusion

This article has shown that diplomatic discourse functions as a strategic practice in which linguistic form and political force are inseparable. In the Algerian statement on Gaza, apology is converted into accusation, solidarity becomes institutional indictment, and legal and moral obligation is constructed through repetition, presupposition, polyphony, metaphor, evidential accumulation, and forced choice. In the U.S. address, diplomatic speech becomes an instrument of sovereign command, institutional delegitimization, allied pressure, and personal leadership projection.

The pragma-argumentative approach makes visible what a purely thematic reading would miss. Speech acts show what utterances perform. Implicatures reveal what is suggested without being explicitly stated. Presuppositions indicate which propositions are treated as already established. Face theory identifies how public images are protected, threatened or sacrificed. Connectors, topoi, metaphors and argumentative scales explain how the audience is guided toward a conclusion.

The comparison demonstrates that diplomatic discourse does not merely describe crises. It distributes responsibility, legitimizes action, reclassifies inaction, attributes authority and constructs political reality. In one case, the diplomatic scene is transformed into a tribunal of moral accountability. In the other, the multilateral stage is used to exert sovereign pressure and to question institutional effectiveness. These two configurations reveal the flexibility and force of contemporary diplomatic language.

The study also confirms the need for methodological rigor in politically charged discourse analysis. A publishable article must define its corpus, identify the institutional context, distinguish original wording from translation, attribute contested terms carefully, avoid unsupported generalizations and maintain a clear separation between corpus voice and analytical voice. Without these safeguards, analysis risks becoming commentary. With them, it can contribute to understanding how international crises are framed, contested and acted upon through language.

Future research could extend the corpus to veto explanations, statements by other Security Council members, Ukrainian and Russian diplomatic discourse, European Union statements, Arab League communiqués, and media circulation of diplomatic formulas. A multimodal extension could also examine voice, gesture, rhythm, silence, camera framing, and online circulation. The central insight, however, remains unchanged: in diplomacy, words are never merely words. They are instruments through which institutions, states, and leaders attempt to produce the political world they name.